Fuel, gas and electricity prices have been rising significantly for a year. Energy prices have skyrocketed since February 24, when the Russian attack on Ukraine began. Minister of Labor Kocher hopes that prices will level off again after “overshooting”. For such “endogenous shocks” there is short-time work, said Kocher on Thursday in the club of economic journalists in Vienna.
Corona short-time work for companies that are particularly affected runs until the end of March, while the short-time work model, which is financially somewhat limited for the companies, runs until the end of June 2022. Kocher now wants to negotiate with the government partner and the social partners on how to proceed with short-time work. “If there is no agreement on a new model, then the model from before the crisis would come into force again,” said Kocher. It was seen that the old short-time work model had “some weak points”. During the economic crisis of 2008/09, industrial companies in particular sent their employees on short-time work. Since the beginning of the corona pandemic, the net replacement rate for employees on short-time work has been 90 percent, 85 percent or 80 percent, depending on income level.
Kocher expects second-round effects
The labor minister expects the war in Ukraine to have negative second-round effects on the domestic economy and the labor market. The improvements in the labor market over the last few months will “not continue like this,” Kocher expects. The forecasts from last December for economic growth in Austria in 2022 are also “unrealistic”. At that time, IHS and Wifo forecast a GDP increase of 4.2 and 5.2 percent respectively for this year.
Ukrainian refugees and the labor market
For the time being, Kocher does not expect Ukrainian refugees to have a major impact on the domestic labor market. The governing parties ÖVP and the Greens are currently negotiating the details of the mass influx directive. Displaced people will be given temporary work permits. Currently, it is mainly women and children who are fleeing Ukraine. According to the Labor Minister, the focus is currently on language courses and childcare. Kocher expects that labor market integration will be “in principle much easier” than with refugees from Syria and Afghanistan because the level of education in Ukraine is higher. Local companies are looking for a lot of workers. At the end of February, 119,000 jobs were reported to the Public Employment Service (AMS) as immediately available.
new unemployment benefit
The long-awaited reform of unemployment insurance is set to become more concrete in the coming months. A draft is planned for the summer, and the project is scheduled to come into force in 2023. However, Kocher does not want to get bogged down in the negotiations on the amount of unemployment benefits. “All other rules are more important.” The declining, phased unemployment benefits that the Minister of Labor is discussing are also “not set in stone” for him. Kocher is “optimistic” about the negotiations with the government partner. “There are certain red lines. We’ll make sure we don’t cross them. Otherwise it doesn’t make sense.”
Kocher does not want to discuss details of the planned reform publicly at the moment. He thinks “nothing about making big preliminary decisions”. The Minister of Labor sees a need for change – as has already been announced several times in the past – with regard to the small amount of additional income in addition to unemployment benefit and the implementation of the existing AMS sanctions. For cooker must.
Source: Nachrichten
